11.4.14

A BARGAIN – THE BEST YOU EVER HAD, Part 3

In this part of my essay on 30 Years Of Maximum R&B we move into the Shel Talmy era. More about this period tomorrow.It’s no secret that by the end of 1964 The
Who were desperate. Pete was smashing guitars which he could ill afford, and
new managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp had to beg, borrow and steal to keep
the ship afloat. So when Fontana passed on a follow-up to ‘I’m The Face’ and
every other label in town turned them down, they grabbed the first chance that
came their way, a production contract with London-based American producer Shel
Talmy who had just taken The Kinks to number one in the UK charts with ‘You
Really Got Me’ (and number two with ‘All Day And All Of The Night’).

It’s no exaggeration to suggest that the
catastrophic economic consequences of this deal would effectively govern the
way The Who’s entire career developed, and an understanding of it is crucial to
a proper understanding of The Who and their career. In a nutshell, Talmy signed
the group to a six-year production deal, giving them a 2.5% (soon raised to 4%)
royalty, and could place their records with whichever label he chose. He was
therefore ideally placed to play both ends against the middle, securing for
himself a royalty from a record company far in excess of what he paid The Who.
He took their tapes to American Decca who released them in the UK on the
Brunswick label, and in the US on Decca. Unfortunately, within a year the relationship
between Talmy and Kit Lambert, and to a lesser extent The Who, was in terminal
decline.

As
far as I was concerned the Talmy deal, and the ongoing hostility which still
existed, meant that Jon and I didn’t have access to the master tapes of the
stuff they recorded with him, which included their next three singles, the
whole of their first album and several relatively unimportant but nevertheless
interesting outtakes, all of them covers, some of which had turned up on the
MCA albums Who Missing and Two’s Missing. Consequently we had to
work from copy tapes and as a result the next seven tracks on Disc 1 of the box
set – ‘I Can’t Explain’, ‘Anyway Anyhow Anywhere’, ‘Daddy Rolling Stone’,
‘My Generation’, ‘The Kids Are Alright’, ‘The Ox’ and ‘A Legal Matter’
– do not sound as crisp as those that follow, or even as sharp as the four
High Numbers’ songs that precede them for that matter. Also, unlike most of the
rest of the box, these songs are in mono. We must therefore ignore the
technical imperfections when judging this music.

First, let’s remember that ‘Explain’,
‘Anyway’ and ‘Generation’ were intended as singles,
and recorded accordingly (and magnificently) by Talmy. The original 45 rpm
black-and-silver-labelled singles, cut deep into the grooves of sturdy 7” black
vinyl, thundered out of juke-boxes, transistor radios (pirate radio loved The
Who) and cheap Dansette multiple change record players and sounded all the
better for it. Nothing can replace that sound, the sound by which The Who first
staked their claim on my consciousness. ‘I Can’t Explain’, their opening salvo,
was a shot across The Kinks’ bows, and in what would become the norm in so many
of their early records, it’s the drums – those rifle-shot drums – that lift the
song beyond anything the Davies brothers’ rhythm section was doing. Listening
to Keith’s rapid-fire ricochet after the words “I know what I mean but...” it’s
clear that something big and new and sparkling is happening here, a different
dynamic in which the drums, hitherto used for keeping time at the back, are the
lead instrument, while the guitar and bass keep time. This is The Who’s first
great musical innovation. Then there’s the words: frustation, anger,
mortification. At a time when all pop songs (including those by The Beatles,
Stones & Kinks) seemed to be about love, either falling in or unrequited,
and were written largely as romantic escapism, The Who present us with a
different kind of pop song, with lyrics that are couched in reality, that deal
with unpleasant truths with which real teenage boys, not just those lucky
enough to have a girlfriend, can identify. Moreover, it’s a song about the
frustration of being unable to express yourself, not just to the girl of your
dreams but, in a broader sense, to the grown-up world as a whole.

‘Anyway,
Anyhow, Anywhere’, their next single, takes the same direct lyrical route,
except that the singer has by now overcome his earlier handicap and adopted an
aura of blind invincibility. Musically, we’re introduced here to the second
great Who innovation: the chiming bell-like open-stringed power-chord, cross
cut against pounding drums and bass and allowed to feedback on itself and drone
into a wall of electronic discord. These two ground-breakers lead naturally to
the third in The Who’s great opening trilogy, ‘My Generation’, in which Pete’s
churning two chord riff sets the stage for Roger’s ‘controversial’ stuttering
vocals, John’s thunderous bass solo and another of Keith’s ferocious drum
assaults. As if the first two raging minutes aren’t enough, The Who pile on the
pressure with an upward key change and climax with a brutal wipe-out of
distorted feedback. In Roger’s hands the lyrics become the perfect war cry for
anyone under 20 – i.e. most of us – who felt that the adult world just
wasn’t for them. From here there was no turning back – hope I die before I
get old indeed.

These three songs, the most obvious
Talmy-produced tracks to include on the box, seem to me to emphasise just how
much the four guys in The Who needed each other to survive. The sound they made
was unique because these guys played their instruments differently from all the
other boys in England who’d taken up guitars and drums in the wake of The
Beatles’ emergence. (Not that The Who had done that... they been at it for almost
three years. The timing of their arrival just made it seem that way.) Townshend invented a different –
noisier, more rhythmic, far less theoretical – way of playing the guitar which
would not have suited any other band, while Entwistle had invented a different
style of playing bass, turning a deep toned rhythm instrument into something
that picked out mid-range lead lines. As for Moon, as his name implied he was
from outer space, light years ahead of his rivals, a complete original, while
only a hard nut like Daltrey, far and away the toughest, most hard-headed member
of this little gang, would have the strength of character to hang on in there
and make himself heard above the din. All of them were odd, unconventional,
extreme, inventive, original, contrary, and somehow they found each other. In
any other band they would have been fired for insubordination; in The Who they
simply egged each other on to greater heights.